Berry's Green Circular Run Walk

I'm still taking it easy but I love running in the countryside. The last couple of weeks I have been up at 5am for 4 hour runs. Today I fancy a quick hour or so.

I find my leaflet on the Berry's Green Circular Walk. These circular walks can be tricky to follow. I decide to try and pre-plot the route using some online maps into GPS format. I struggle. Google Maps does not have footpaths, Open Street Map has huge blank spots and in some places looks plain wrong. In the end I have ViewRanger and the 1:250000 OS maps on my Phone. I plot what looks like a good version of the route (my first attempt using ViewRanger)

I start soon after first light (no need for expensive flashy head torches today) I soon see a number of points I recognize from Jerry's fiendish night run. That was a great run, but the hills were to die for. But that's Cudham and that's how it was today.

The other problem today was the mud. In my road shoes I spent much of the time slipping. Which is energy sapping and you have to concentrate to avoid falling over.

In the end I start following the live map on the GPS route I had uploaded onto the phone. It saves me a couple of times when I go massively wrong. This seems to be a good way to do this kind of run, phone in one hand keeping me on track. Then it starts to rain. Fortunately I have a plastic sandwich bag and the phone works happily (including the touchscreen) in there. Maybe I need to get myself a case...

At one point I run across the North Downs way. I feel on top of the roof of Kent as I look down on Westerham. This is running at its absolute best.

As it turns out my GPS route was spot on in each and every case. All footpaths are shown on the OS map. Some are bare tracks through the middle of a field you would not know they were there. The GPS sees it all though. Once I have exhausted the Circular Walks it will be fairly easy to plot some great routes which I can then just follow. ViewRanger is the business.

On the final slog back to the car I see the Wheelbarrow we had all laughed at on the night run and stop to take a picture. It has taken me far longer to do the run than I had expected. It was also much harder with all the climbs and mud. But I loved it.

Lots of stops to stare and maps and scratch my head.

13.74km 1"55